Sunday, May 20, 2007

Pharyngula, and Technorati ranks

And now for something completely different... I just coded (for fun) a couple of scripts to show a table of Technorati incoming links and ranks for all the PA members. The table is sorted by Technorati ranks, which are kind of (that is, don't take it too seriously) a measure a blog's success among other blogs; it counts the recent (180 days or less) links to a blog. How that rank is calculated is kind of mysterious, though, and, anyway, it's not a perfect system (for instance, some of the blogs are listed as having 0 links, which obviously can't be true, unless those blogs aren't listed on Technorati yet). [EDIT: that seems to be the case; the blogs are there, but don't have ranks yet. It must take some time.]

Therefore, don't put too much faith in it, and don't use it as a measure for the success of your blog. It's a toy. For fun. Nothing more. If you know another members of PA personally, it allows for playful competition among you, but I hope you don't start any real life feuds or something. :)

Since it involves making 76 queries (and rising) to Technorati, I'm updating it only once a day (midnight GMT). Enjoy...

4 comments:

one of the things that I meant to mention before, yet failed to, is the "cheese" list.

Would it be possible to add this link to the front page? I sometimes use it to locate a post that I may have commented on, but failed to note the address to read any follow-ups. It's also good for getting an overview of what sort of topics are hot at a particular moment in time.

Thanks for PA, it's definitely one of the sites that I read more than once a day.

nullifidian: there's a link for that, called "View the Archives". It's just above "Joining Planet Atheism". I'll grant you it's a bit much too hidden, though. I'll make it more visible later today, when I'll edit the templates to add the new logo.